


The Last Temptation of The Lady Detective

by mldrgrl



Series: Adventures of The Lady Detective and The Writer [5]
Category: Californication (TV), The Fall (TV 2013)
Genre: F/M, Fantasy, Phone Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-03
Updated: 2016-12-03
Packaged: 2018-09-06 03:09:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8732458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mldrgrl/pseuds/mldrgrl
Summary: What can they do when they're missing each other and not on the same continent?





	

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文 available: [女警探最後的誘惑](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13448844) by [amamitouko](https://archiveofourown.org/users/amamitouko/pseuds/amamitouko)



She was supposed to have been a one night stand. Nothing more, and no different from any other one night stand. Except, she was different. An exceptional exception. Generally, he had a pretty laissez-faire attitude about the women in his life, but whatever he could do to make this thing work, he was willing to do. He wanted it to work very badly.

 

The good thing was, he could write anywhere. He was free to travel to and from London as often as he could. Rather, as often as she would agree to. In six months he’d been to see her on seven occasions, staying a week each time. She’d been to New York once. Work was her priority and he had a feeling it would always be number one in her life. He wanted more of her. More of her time, more of her attention, and more significance to her in the grand scheme of things.

 

Since leaving LA, he felt like he’d become a different person, with different goals. Separated from an environment where one’s worth was only measured by how many steps removed one was from celebrity had changed his lifestyle. He drank less, he quit smoking, he worked harder, and everything in between was about Stella.

 

He hadn’t told her that he loved her, but he had told Karen, who had become a confidante like no other in his life, not even Charlie. When he realized he had fallen, and fallen hard, Karen was the first and only person to come in mind with whom he wanted to share it with. It had come as a surprise to him after an argument had erupted between him and Stella and he took a walk to clear his head.

 

Maybe (probably) it was arrogant of him, but he took comfort in the fact that no matter who the woman was he was with, he would always be smarter. In any argument, he enjoyed flustering his partner with his large vocabulary and even larger penchant for sarcasm. He could win a war of words in his sleep, without fail, until the night in question.

 

All he’d wanted was her attention. She’d spent all day at work and he’d spent all day writing, but instead of coming home and spending time with him, she was intent on finishing a report before she did anything at all. He grumbled immaturely as he stalked around the chair she worked from. And that’s when it happened.

 

“I’m only here for two more days,” he said. “It would be nice if you weren’t so disinterested, is all I’m saying.”

 

“I believe you mean uninterested,” she replied, very quietly, without even looking up from her report.

 

“What?”

 

Still, without looking up, she continued in the most conversational and quiet tone. “Disinterested means unbiased or impartial. Currently, I am biased towards completing this report so that we may have uninterrupted time later. If you were implying I lack an interest in you, the word you want is uninterested.”

 

And that was the truly strange thing about this relationship. He was accustomed to dramatic, hysterical women. Women who yelled, threw things, and cursed his very existence, most of the time rightfully so. There was passion in hyperbole, and he knew how to deal with passion. It had also led to some pretty spectacular sessions of make-up sex in his life. Stella’s quiet correction had rattled him so much that he’d silently walked out of her flat, chagrined and morose. The first thing he did was pull up the dictionary on his phone to verify if what she’d said was true, which it was, and the second thing he did was call Karen.

 

He’d ranted about the maltreatment he’d suffered and when he finished, Karen simply told him he was a selfish, immature idiot, and in all the years she’d known him, he’d never accepted the fact that his bottomless need for attention was a symptom of baseless insecurities. She basically told him to get the fuck over himself and quit being such a self-centered bastard. And that’s why she was still his best friend. She never worried about sparing his feelings and told him the truth.

 

He hung up on her. And then he immediately called her back and asked her what he could do differently because he was pretty sure he was in love with Stella and didn’t want to fuck it up any more than he already had.

 

“Don’t be an asshole,” Karen had told him.  

 

“What would a non-asshole do in this situation?” he asked.

 

“Apologize,” she said. “And mean it.”

 

He did. And once Stella had finished with her work, he had her full attention for the next two days. That was three weeks ago, and it was the last time he’d been with her. He was set to go back to London at the end of the week and he was anxious to get there.

 

As though she knew he was thinking about her, his phone rang. It was late in New York and early in London. Either she couldn’t sleep or hadn’t even gone to bed yet.

 

“Good morning, Sherlock,” he answered.

 

“Good evening, Watson,” she said.

 

“To what do I owe the pleasure tonight?”

 

“I wanted to hear your voice.”

 

“Really?” He would admit to his heart skipping a beat at that.

 

“Yes. I…” There was a short pause and the hesitation in her tone was all too apparent. The skip in his heart was for a different reason this time. “I needed to hear your voice,” she finished.

 

“My voice is at the lady’s service for whatever she needs.”

 

“Actually, I needed to speak to you about something.”

 

“Oh?”

 

“I’m not in the habit of denying myself of pleasure when I want it, especially when an opportunity presents itself.”

 

“Oh…” Hank sat up a little straighter. He knew all about irresistible opportunities and indulging in them. Irresistible opportunities had fucked up every good thing in his life.

 

“I want what I want when I want it. It’s never been a problem for me.”

 

“Me neither,” he said, and he could feel a burning in his chest where his heart might be bleeding.

 

“I met a man today in my hour of need.”

 

He swallowed. “Stella, if you…”

 

“And the only thing that stopped me was knowing how angry I would feel if you were to give in to the same temptation that I was about to give in to.”

 

“Stella…” His whole chest ached now, but relief also washed over him. He wished he could snap his fingers and be in London in that moment.

 

“Have you?”

 

“No.”

 

That was the truth. Not since Karen had he felt the uncompromising need to be faithful to someone. Maybe that should have been his first clue that he felt more than casual feelings about her, but he just assumed it was the change of scenery and a general desire to settle down and live a quieter life. The desire for something more ‘normal’ happened even before he’d gone to London and helped her through her recovery from the Belfast case. Maybe that change had been her all along. The simple fact was, he was _uninterested_ in anyone but her.

 

“Hank?” Stella sighed.

 

“Yes?”

 

“You’re the only one who can give me what I need right now.”

 

“Yeah? What do you need?”

 

“I think you know.”

 

They’d tried the phone sex thing months ago, but it was largely unsuccessful. Her vocal participation was minimal and the more he tried to draw her out, the less involved she became. She also had a strong distaste for being told what to do. Even if he was with her physically, taking direction was not her forte. He was the one with words and she expressed herself more physically, indirectly telling him what she liked and wanted with her body. Perhaps that was the key.

 

“Should I tell you a story?” he asked.

 

“Yes.”

 

“Are you…comfortable?”

 

“Very.”

 

He adjusted his grip on his phone as he laid back on his couch and unbuttoned and unzipped his pants.

 

“I’m thinking about that cocktail party we went to when you were here,” he said.

 

“The art gallery opening in SoHo?”

 

“Shhhh, just listen.”

 

It was a sweltering night in August. The kind of night where the air slapped you in the face with wet heat as soon as you stepped outside. In the one minute it took to get from his loft into the taxi, he could already feel the sweat rolling down his spine. It was much too hot to go out, but he owed a favor to a friend who felt Hank’s name and presence would pull in more people into his gallery.

 

Humidity aside, there was another reason he’d rather stay in. As soon as Stella had emerged from putting herself together, he was ready to feign a life-threatening illness just to stay home with her. She crossed the floor in dangerously high stiletto shoes, thin black straps criss-crossing over the tops of her feet and ankles. The halter dress she wore showed an alarming amount of thigh and the back was completely open from neck to tailbone. As she moved, the color seemed to change from blue to purple to black, depending on the light. He was mesmerized.

 

Her hair was twisted into a knot at her nape, both casual and elegant at the same time. The ties of her halter top dangled freely and swayed across the middle of her back. He wanted to curl those strings around his finger and unwrap her like the best Christmas present ever. She avoided his searching hands, grabbed a clutch purse, and told him she’d hail the cab if he didn’t.

 

Inside the gallery, he couldn’t take his eyes off of her. He sipped champagne that tasted like piss and gnawed on rubbery hors d'oeuvres and watched her float through the room studying shitty modern art as though a red dot on a white canvas was a revelation. There was only one masterpiece in the room as far as he was concerned, and it was her.

 

At one point, a man who looked as though Andy Warhol had inspired his entire existence approached her and Hank watched with pure amusement as his less than subtle attempts at flirtation were flatly rejected and he was forced to slink away in shame. It seemed to open the door for a parade of hopefuls, each destined for swift dismissal. He thought about coming to her rescue by stepping in and taking possession her, but that was likely to piss her off.

 

The only time he seriously considered intervening was when a tall, attractive brunette in a dress even shorter than Stella’s tried her hand in the game. Whatever the woman said to her had made Stella laugh and she turned her head at just the right angle so that she met his gaze. The look in her eye was positively feral.

 

Alarmed, he lowered his champagne glass. She blinked languidly and twisted the silver icicle earring dangling from her right lobe before dragging her fingers down her neck and turning her attention back to the woman beside her. That her attention was diverted at all was the only sign he needed to keep him at bay, but he couldn’t wait much longer to get his hands on her.

 

Finally, both she and the brunette parted ways and Stella stood alone in front of a wall that looked like it had been scribbled on by an unruly toddler with a blue crayon. He moved up behind her and touched her lower back, circling his thumb over one of the alluring dimples at the side of her spine, just above her tailbone. She told him to take her home.

 

It was too hot to touch her in the taxi. The air conditioning in the car was too weak and the waves of heat radiating off both of them kept them on opposite sides of the backseat. Every time she shifted her legs his pants got tighter and the temperature rose another degree.

 

The old service elevator that took them up to the loft was impossibly slow. He trapped her in the corner, gripping the ancient chainlink cage by her head, and leaned into her space. She lifted her chin and turned her head ever so slightly, offering her neck to him for smelling, licking, biting, sucking, whatever he had in mind. He pressed his mouth to the hollow juncture where her neck and shoulder met and her earring tickled his cheek. The jasmine perfume he knew she brushed onto the back of her jaw wafted over him like a warm summer breeze.

 

He let go of the fencing and caressed the back of her thigh as he tongued the misty layer of sweat off her clavicle. His hand moved up under her dress and he growled slightly in appreciation when his grip was full of bare asscheek. His index finger strayed between the juncture of her thighs and met nothing but slick skin and heat. Had he known she hadn’t been wearing anything underneath that dress that whole time, they never would’ve made it out the door.

 

The elevator lurched to a stop and he yanked the accordion gate open to open the metal door. The entryway bled into the kitchen which bled into the living room and beyond that, the bedroom. They never made it past the oversized butcher’s block that served as a makeshift kitchen island. He ripped his t-shirt off as he backed her into the block and then he shoved a small bowl of apples and bananas to the ground as he lifted her onto it. He heard the ceramic dish crack and the fruit bounce and scatter across the floor, but he didn’t care.

 

He didn’t know what he wanted first. His dick was so hard he could probably cut glass and his balls ached for relief, but he also wanted to taste her as badly as a man dying of thirst needs a drop of water. She made the decision for him by yanking at his belt to unbuckle it. She ripped open the buttons along his fly and he groaned when her hand dove inside and squeezed him over his boxer briefs. It was a clear sign she was in one of her ‘shut up and fuck me, Hank,’ moods, and there would be no foreplay.

 

He wrenched the skirt of her dress up to her hips and she shoved his pants down just enough to expose what she wanted most. As he slid inside of her, she brought her knees up and pressed her thighs to his hips as she leaned back with her hands gripping the edge of the block behind her. He didn’t have to worry that she wasn’t strong enough to maintain the position - she was probably stronger than he was. Judging by the powerful grip the muscles along the inside of her thighs took on his hips, she wasn’t going anywhere, but he held on to her hips anyway, just in case.

 

He started slowly, rocking his hips more than thrusting. Her jaw slackened and her lips parted as her mouth relaxed. He bent his head to quickly swipe his tongue across her upper lip and then bent further so that he could scrape his teeth over the constellation of freckles on her bare shoulder. He moved his head down and around to the back of her neck and bit on the ties of her halter top. After a few sharp tugs, the straps loosened and came free, sending the top on a slow slide down her chest until her breasts were exposed.

 

He stared at the hypnotizing bounce of her breasts as he jarred her hips with his thrusts. If only he had more than two hands, one mouth, and one cock. Oh, the things he could do. Her thighs clenched harder against his hips with impatience and he began to pound into her with almost brutal intensity, spurred on by the breathless moans pouring from her mouth. He knocked the knot in her hair free and as it unraveled, wispy curls began to stick to the sweat on her cheeks and neck.

 

He was getting too close too fast and as torturous as it was, he pulled out of her and quickly lowered himself to his knees. She gave a growl of protest, but wiggled her hips closer to the edge of the small table when she realized what he had in mind and shoved her fingers into his hair as he shoved his face between her legs. Her hips tilted as she leaned her weight on one arm and her face contorted into that fine blur between pleasure and pain as he probed the top of her folds with his tongue and then made a suction out of his mouth, drawing the most sensitive bud of hidden flesh past his bottom lip. She expressed her approval in staccato whimpers and the rough pull of his hair.

 

He wrapped his arms over her thighs and flicked his tongue over the exposed cluster of nerves. Her legs quivered and quaked and she she threw her head back and moaned as he lapped at the warm flood of her arousal. He could sense the weakening of her arm and he stood back up, keeping his arms around her thighs so that her legs were pushed up and back by the press of his shoulders.

 

He rose slowly, licking her navel and the underside of her right breast before filling his mouth with it and biting lightly on her pert nipple. She gave his hair a tug and he lifted his head as she gazed at him with droopy, lust-filled eyes. Her chest was splotched red and there were twin blooms of rosy heat staining her cheeks. He leaned against her bent knees as he slid back inside her and took a solid grip on her hips. She held tightly to his shoulders even though her fingers slipped on his sweaty skin.

 

The taut grip of impending orgasm was upon him, but he wanted to make her come just one more time before he lost it. He could tell by her pinched brows and squeezed-shut eyes that she was on that precipice again, desperate to fall. He let go of one hip to roughly pinch her nipple and slammed into her so hard he was pretty sure he hit the back of her throat. She gave a choking gasp and her whole body shook. Her nails dug so deep into his shoulders that he felt the sting of broken skin and a light trickle of blood roll down his back.

 

His release came with a deep groan and the sloppy jerk of his hips. Their combined labored breathing seemed loud and harsh in his ears. He dropped his sweaty head to her sweaty shoulder and eased her legs down to wrap his arms around her. His chest heaved against hers, hot and strong. She heaved back, hot and soft.

 

God he loved fucking her. He loved the smell of her and the taste of her and the sounds she made and the feel of her skin on his skin and being inside of her. He loved her mind and her soul and he just loved her. He just _loved her_.

 

“Hank,” she breathed.

 

“Stella,” he murmured, blinking open his eyes.

 

He floated out of the euphoria of fantasy into sticky reality. Lost as he was in memory, he wasn’t quite sure what he’d said out loud and what he’d only thought. The labored breathing wasn’t just in his imagination though. He could hear her over the phone and he waited for her to return to normal.

 

“Thank you,” she finally said.

 

“My pleasure.”

 

“You’ve a highly active imagination.”

 

“My second grade teacher said the same thing. I think it was code for hyperactive.”

 

“My heels weren’t that high that night.”

 

“They looked high.”

 

“I had one, maybe two admirers in the crowd.”

 

“Everyone who stepped within twenty feet of your orbit wanted to fuck you. I could smell it on them.”

 

“I didn’t notice.”

 

“You should see you through my eyes.”

 

“I believe I just did.”

 

His heart thrummed painfully against his chest, a pang of longing. If only there was a way to reach through the phone and touch her.

 

“Look,” he said. “I know London is only four days away.”

 

“Yes.” A soft sigh drifted into his ear.

 

“What if I came earlier? Like, tomorrow?”

 

“My tomorrow or your tomorrow?”

 

He looked up at the clock across the room. Not quite midnight. “My tomorrow,” he said. “Your today.”

 

“If that’s what you want.”

 

“I want to know if it’s what _you_ want.”

 

There was a five second pause which seemed to last fifteen minutes. Finally, she answered very quietly, “yes, that’s what I want.”

 

“Then I’ll see you soon.”

 

“Hank,” she said, stopping him before he hung up.

 

“Stella,” he answered.

 

“I love fucking you too.”

 

His heart stopped completely and then he smiled. “You’ve made my night, Sherlock.”

 

“You’ve made mine, Watson.”

 

“I’ll see you soon.”

 

The End

 

 

 


End file.
